For most students and faculty, including myself, the ECLA community lies outside of their home country. We live in a state of which we are not citizens. Nonetheless many of us retain an undiminished concern for the political conditions of the country where we were born. In such a situation, addressing the question of what
TagGuest Lecture
An Evening with Euclid
On November 16th, students and faculty, led by Michael Weinman, came together for a seminar on Euclid’s Elements which was a supplementary seminar to the Academy Year core course on Plato’s Republic. The discussion aimed to relate Euclid’s propositions to the concept of the divided line found in Book VI of the Republic and Socrates’ suggested educational
Heinrich Meier: A Political Confrontation
On the evening of October 27th ECLA was honored with a lecture by the highly-respected German scholar Heinrich Meier. Meier has written extensively on Carl Schmitt, a controversial political theorist whose work has received increasing attention in the past three decades. In the lead-up to Meier’s lecture, Schmitt and his theories emerged as a topic of
Glenn Most on The Bacchae
In a guest lecture for the BA1 and AY Core Course, ECLA was glad to welcome one of today’s most distinguished classicists. Glenn Most received his BA from Harvard in 1972, continued his studies in Oxford for his MA and received his M.Phil. and a Ph.D. from Yale in 1978. Simultaneously, he received another Ph.D.
Jarrell Robinson on Justice and Education in Plato’s Republic
On Wednesday, the 12th of October, ECLA welcomed Jarrell Robinson as a guest lecturer on the second book of Plato’s Republic for our Core course: Plato and his Interlocutors. Jarrell received his BA from St. John’s College and his MA from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and has been a
Frank Fehrenbach on Leonardo’s Art
If a painting is presented to two people, each of them would probably see something different in it. They might even disagree about what they see to the point of drawing daggers. Art involves the viewer in a very unique way and the experience of looking at something and feeling something is individual. As we
“God Is Dead.” Long Live God? The “Future of an Illusion” Foretold
On good authority, I know that many of the people who came to attend Julia Kristeva’s lecture (“The forces of monotheism confronting the need to believe”) at Haus der Kulturen der Welt on March 8th, did so me more for the speaker than for the subject as such. And how could you not get excited?
Dynamics of Modernity
A week’s worth of immersion in Renaissance art requires both time for contemplation and occasion for discourse. As such, the spring term’s core course on Values of Florentine Renaissance commenced with a guest lecture by the prominent Hungarian philosopher Agnes Heller. Professor Heller broached the topic of historical interpretation by briefly discussing Goethe and Hegel’s